The offer from Zalgiris for Rokas Dubickas was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trakai this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Trakai asked and Qarabag said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Miloš Savić falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Miloš Savić has, at Trakai, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Rokas Dubickas was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The phone has started ringing about Rokas Novikovas again, and this time the name on the line is Siauliai. Trakai are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Miloš Savić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Trakai, another week without a signature from Miloš Savić.